Grilled Meatballs!

This weekend was a good one. We were just busy enough and had fun. Saturday, we went to a garden fair in Palmer. That was fun. We walked around looking at all the plants and art that people had for sale. They had live music and we sat and listened to a summer youth band. Isabella and I split a blueberry and strawberry shortcake. Then we went to a booth that was a kids farmers market. The lady running the booth read a story about where soup comes from. Then she gave all the kids $5 in play money to spend at the market. Isabella picked what she wanted. We got 5 potatoes, a bunch of radishes, bunch of green onions, celery, a zucchini, and 2 small cups of cherry tomatoes.  It was nice getting all those fresh Alaska grown veggies for free.
      While Isabella napped, I made pulled pork nachos. I took some pulled pork out of the freezer that I had made before. The pork went on top of tortilla chips with green onions, grilled corn, and cheese. The whole thing went in the oven till the cheese was melted and the pork heated up. I also made a cherry blueberry pie filling using frozen cherries and blueberries. I used this recipe for the filling and substituted refrigerated pie crusts for the crust. I added about a cup of frozen blueberries, the zest and juice of a clementine orange, and the zest of half a lemon to the filling also.  I put the bottom crust in a buttered cast iron skillet, poured the filling on top, and put the top crust on. The top crust was sprinkled with sugar before I put it in the oven. The pie came out nice and golden brown and the filling was gelled.

For dinner I grilled quesadillas. I put 2 cans of drained red beans, minced garlic, salsa, taco seasoning, sweet onion, and sweet pepper in the food processor and processed till smooth. Then I cooked the bean mixture for a bit.  Next, I spread the bean mixture onto tortillas and added cheese. I grilled them over medium heat and gave them a quarter turn before flipping them. I grilled them till they had nice grill marks and were crispy.

 Sunday morning, I mixed up some ciabatta  bread dough to let it rise for dinner. Here is the super easy recipe. Stacy had made a coffee cake for breakfast so I put the bread dough in the warm oven to rise all day. To cook it, I put the dough in my buttered cast iron skillet and threw it on the grill at low heat. The bread got cooked till it was a golden color.

During Isabella's nap, I made meatballs. I mixed mild Italian sausage, eggs, Italian bread crumbs, sweet peppers, parmesean cheese, minced garlic, and pepper. I formed them into balls and froze them for a couple hours till it was time to grill them. I grilled the meatballs on my Pampered Chef Roasting Pan and Can Holder Pan. I use this pan almost every weekend and is one of my favorites. I grilled the meatballs over medium heat and turned them a few times. I left them alone too long a few times so they got a little dark. We really liked them though.

The spaghetti sauce was a combination of homemade and canned. I can't ever just use a spaghetti sauce straight out of the can or jar. I started out by sauteing onions, peppers, and carrots in olive oil for about 10 minutes. I salt and peppered the veggies at this time. Then I added a can of diced tomatoes and cooked for a few more minutes on medium heat. After that, I added a can and half a jar of sauce and parmasean  cheese and simmered on low for at least half an hour or more. The pasta which was linguine and elbows was cooked and added to the sauce.

Here is Isabella's plate of noodles and meatball!

 Finally as a side dish, I grilled sweet peppers and radishes. We wanted a way to use the radishes that we got at the farmers market that wasn't eating them raw. I found various recipes for grilled radishes and picked one I liked. The radishes got sliced and added to a foil packet with the peppers. To the veggies, I added salt and pepper and olive oil. The packet then got grilled for about 25 minutes. We all liked the radishes, even Stacy who normally doesn't like them.

Well that's all for this week. I hope everybody has a good week!

Matt

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